Hop Li groaned. She squeezed a few drops from her shift into his mouth and used it to clean his face. Then she rolled up the shift and propped his head up with it. His breathing had improved but his face looked ashen. He whispered something and she put her ear close to his lips.
“Say that again.”
“My eye…can’t see out of my eye…”
“It’s swollen. When the swelling goes down you’ll be able to see…”
“Feels like a knife…”
She touched his eye gently - it was a mass of jelly, as if his eyeball had exploded.
“It’s alright,” she lied. “Just swollen…”
“My dagger…?”
“He took it. Bernard took it.”
“Bernard? What about the boy - Hohepa - is he safe? We were picking mushrooms. A stupid thing to do. I thought it would keep him busy.”
“Hohepa went for help. It won’t be long now. He must be having trouble finding Frank. But he’ll find someone. He’s a clever boy.” She wished she hadn’t told Hohepa to find Frank. She should have told him to tell the first person he came across. If he’d taken her at her word it could take hours before help came. And Bernard might return before then. If he did she was sure he would kill Hop Li. There was no reason to keep him alive.
“Constable Gillespie…” whispered Hop Li. Gillespie had recently replaced Constable Price, and Mette had not met him because they were out at the farm; she’d heard he was reliable but inclined to stick to the letter of the law. She could imagine him ignoring the desperate pleas of a small Maori boy. But if he wouldn’t do anything, Hohepa would find someone else, surely. If only he told someone and did not just look for Frank.
“How did you get here?” she asked. “There are mushrooms closer to town.”
“Horse,” he said. “We came on Boyle’s horse with the white star. She needed to exer…” His voice trailed off.
“Where is it now? Is it close by?”
He nodded. He was starting to fade away. But she realized that the horse might give them a way out. “Could I get it here? How would I do it? Frank always whistles, and they just come.”
He said something that she couldn’t catch, and then his head fell sideways. For a terrible minute she thought he was dead, but when she put her head against his chest she could hear his heart beating. “Don’t talk. Get some rest,” she said, knowing he probably couldn’t hear her. “I’m going to watch from the window. If I see anyone coming I’ll scream for help.”
She spent several minutes trying to whistle, and calling the horse. She considered waking Hop Li and asking him for the horse’s name, wondering if that would make a difference. In the end, she called for Dolores. The wrong horse, but at least it was the name of a horse. But nothing moved.
The pathway through the pine trees was lit by the moon, with shadows and light making it seem as if pixies were dancing before her. She willed Frank to appear. She heard the sound of a choir in the distance. Had she died and was hearing the celestial choir? But then she remembered Agnete telling her there was a pledge signing ceremony at the race course. They were probably singing the temperance songs. She concentrated on listening to the sound, imagining herself in church. It kept her calm for a while. Was Frank in the pledge tent, unaware of what had happened to her, thinking she was safe at Ernest and Agnete’s? The thought made her smile. Of course he would not be at the pledge tent.
As soon as she saw the silhouette appearing in the shadows of the pine trees she knew it was not Frank. A tall thin man wearing a hat with a floppy brim, a boy beside him. Not bulky enough to be Bernard. Constable Gillespie? But Constable Gillespie would be in uniform, and that didn’t include a floppy, wide-brimmed hat.
“Mrs. Hardy…Mrs. Hardy. I’m sorry…”
She heard someone lift the bar on the door and open it. Her mind was filled with irrational hope. “Constable Gilliespie?”
Hohepa was pushed through the door. He sniffed and wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I couldn’t find Sergeant Hardy, but…ouch…” He sprawled across the floor. “What are you doing, mister?”
The door slammed shut and the bar dropped again. Mette jumped over Hohepa and tried to push it open before he locked them in again, but was too slow. She threw herself hard against the door a few times, but it stayed where it was.
Hohepa pulled himself to his feet, rubbing his eyes.
“Did you see Frank?” she asked.
Hohepa shook his head and sniffed. “The man…the man…”
Her whole body ached and all she wanted to do was stare out the window and listen to the faraway choir, her hopes of rescue dashed. Frank was not coming. She would have to find a way out herself. Hohepa and Hop Li depended on her. First, she had to know who this latest adversary was.
“Hohepa, who was it who brought you here? Anyone you know? Was it the same man who…?”
He wiped his eyes again, and sniffled, but said nothing. She put her arms around him, held him close and stroked his head. “Hohepa - I need to know who the man was who brought you here. Can you tell me?”
He leaned his head against her chest and nodded. “He Kino,” he said. “He’s the big boss. He Kino.”
“He Kino? How do you know his name?”
“I went to all the shops, looking for someone. But they were all closed. Then at the book shop the light was on inside. I go there to get my shillings…”
“Your shillings? Never mind…then what happened.”
“I knocked on the door and no one came. Then a man came up behind me and asked me if I was going to rob the place. He said it like he was joking so I though he must be good. I said I was looking for help for Mrs. Hardy…and then he grabbed my arm and made me come with him here.”
“Did you tell him where to come or did he know?”
“I don’t know…”
“You don’t remember telling him where to go?”
Hohepa shook his head. “No…”
“So he knew where to come?”
“I suppose so…”
Mette kept holding him for a while without asking him any more questions. He seemed to like being held. She wondered how it had been for him, with no mother, a sister away being a warrior at the front, and only an aged grandmother to care for him. Why had she not insisted…?
“Why did you say the man was He Kino…the big boss?”
“Because he’s the man who gives the boys money.”
Mette was confused. It was hard to get a clear answer from Hohepa, but she reminded herself that he was only ten.
“I have some matches,” he said suddenly. “And some tobacco. Do you want to smoke? It helps you think better…”
Mette shook her head. “No thanks. Have you been smoking, Hohepa?”
“I tried,” he said. “But it made me sick. I used my two and six that the policeman gave me, and now I wish I didn’t.”
“I’ll give you another half crown,” she promised. “When we get out of here. And we have to find a way to do that. We need to make a noise…I wish we had a gun.”
“We could bang the wood against the door,” he said. “Or smash the window…”
She picked up a piece of the rafter and smashed the broken glass in the window. It made a noise - a lot of noise - but not enough to attract the attention of anyone more than a hundred yards away. With the glass gone she could hear the choir singing better, which filled her with hope. “Hohepa, as soon as the choir stops I want you to scream as loud as you can through the window. It’s no use trying until the choir stops.”
They stood together and waited for a break in the singing. Hohepa noticed it before she did. “They stopped.”
“Alright then…one, two, three…and scream.”
The noise they made would have woken the dead. They kept it up for several minutes until Mette felt her throat closing over. She thought they probably sounded like kiwis, which she had heard shrieking in the night. Anyone who heard them would say, listen to the kiwis. Who would think
it was someone calling for help?
“Mette?” said Hop Li.
She bent over him and heard him whisper something.
“I can’t hear what you’re saying…”
“I’m going to die…”
“No, you’re not. I won’t let you…Frank is looking for me, I know he is. He won’t stop until he finds me…”
“Finds our bodies…” he whispered. “Mette, if I die and you live, please send a letter to my mother.”
She heard Hohepa say something, but ignored him, focusing on Hop Li who was so quiet she could barely hear him. Behind her, Hohepa started climbing towards the roof. She glanced back, not worried. He probably couldn’t get out, but no harm in trying. He was too small to reach the beams to pull himself up to the roof.
“I’ll write to your mother, of course I will. But can she read English?”
He reached for her with his good hand and patted her on the shoulder. “Not write a letter. Send a letter. It’s in the safe box at the hotel…I…”
“The safe box? Of course I’ll send it, but I won’t need to…”
She smelled something. Tobacco smoke. Was Hohepa trying one of his cigarettes?
Turning, she saw him propped up triumphantly on the top of the window frame, his head a few inches below the roof, holding onto a beam with one hand. He still held the matchbox in the other hand.
“Hohepa, what have you done?”
“I lit a cigarette and threw it out the hole up there,” he said. “And now the roof is on fire. When they see it and they’ll come and get us, won’t they?”
He dangled from from the top of the window frame, his toes on the sill. “Can you help me down? It was easy to get up here but now I’m scared I’ll fall.”
She stood close and guided his hands to her shoulders. “Jump into my arms.”
He closed his eyes and fell forward. She staggered back under the force of his fall, and they landed in a heap on the floor. He untangled himself and sat up, looking at the roof, still not aware of what was going to happen. “That’s a good fire up there, isn’t it Mette?”
She nodded. How could she tell him? The hut was on fire and they had no way to get out.
“I hope someone sees…”
Outside the window, a spark arced slowly from the roof and landed in front of her on the dry needles beneath the pines. “Oh no. Oh no…”
She held her breath, praying that the fire would not take, that the dampness in the undergrowth would suppress the flame. But a thin trail of smoke began to rise from the pine needles and she knew the grass and brush outside the hut would soon catch fire. She pressed her face against the window and watched as the thin trail of smoke gradually thickened.
21
The Team
He escorted Mrs. Patterson back to her coach and returned to where Karira waited patiently with Dead Shot. Karira had dismounted, but the other three men were still seated on their horses, waiting for instructions.
“Karira, I think we’d better put Dead Shot in one of the stables and leave a couple of your men to guard him. Are they armed?”
The two bigger men dismounted and came forward. They looked like a solid pair, both built like rugby forwards and he wondered if they had been part of the Powhiri team who had jumped on him when he took down Anahera. Both were holding older converted Enfields and had ten inch Bowie knives in their belts — the knife introduced into New Zealand by Von Tempsky. Karira had chosen his guards well and armed them appropriately. The smaller one he was not so sure of, a young man not much bigger than Frank’s stable boy, Hemi. But you could never tell - sometimes small men could be excellent fighters. He was about to ask the young man about his experience when he realized he or she - looked familiar. Not only familiar, but also not a small man. “Wiki?”
She grinned down at him and said to Karira, “I told you he’d recognize me. Hello Sergeant Frank.”
“Wiki, what are you doing here?”
She threw her leg across the saddle and jumped from the horse. “I was at the Motuiti Marae when Will came to look for some warriors to guard your horse on the way from Foxton. So I said I’d come. He didn’t want me to, but it was a chance for me…”
“A chance? A chance for what? Wiki, what are you up to.”
She tossed her head and he noticed how short her hair was. The last time he’d seen her it was down to her waist. “I’m going back to Parihaka. I don’t care if they’re looking for me…I want to be there when the attack happens…”
“You were in…well, never mind that now. Wiki, someone has kidnapped Mette and wants to exchange her for the horse, for Dead Shot.”
Wiki glanced at the two young men from the Motuiti Marae, her eyebrows raised. Frank saw them shrug. “We’ll stay here and help,” she said. “We were going straight on to Parihaka tonight, but we’ll stay until we find Mette.”
The two men nodded their agreement. He imagined they’d do whatever she asked of them. Her strength was in the force of her personality, not her size or speed. He should have known that. He’d seen his fellow skirmishers during a battle, and the smaller men were often better fighters. Even Von Tempsky had been a small man. She was a strong young woman, and she reminded him in same ways of the woman with whom he had just spoken, Mrs. Patterson.
“Thank you, Wiki…”
“She saved me,” said Wiki. “One day I hope I can save her.”
The cricket team were waiting patiently, still smoking.
“What’s the plan then sarge?” asked Todd.
He looked around at his resources. Karira, Wiki and the two young men from Motuiti Marae. He’d have to leave the two men to take care of Dead Shot. He wasn’t going to let the horse go until they’d returned Mette to him. Of the smokers, five remained, the rest having run off to fetch weapons and not returned. And then there was Mrs. Patterson and her coachman, who hadn’t left yet. She seemed keen to assist. He could leave the two of them at the front gate of the racecourse to direct Inspector James if he appeared. Then, of course, there was Karira and Wiki.
“Mr. Todd, could you ask Mrs. Patterson to place her coach across the entrance of the racecourse? And tell her to watch for Inspector James. I sent him a note earlier and one of the volunteers went to look for him as well. Karira, your two men can stay in the stable with Dead Shot for now. Make sure they stay alert for an attack. The rest of you, I’d like to explore the racetrack. Everything seems to be connected to racing and the horse. My wife is probably being held somewhere in this vicinity.”
He divided the group in half and sent one group off with Karira. Karira’s group were to search the stables and the pledge signing tent. His group set off to circle the track itself, to keep an eye out for any sign of anyone who had walked from the course into the bush. The track was muddy and there hadn’t been any races for a week, so there was no reason to see any footprints.
They were on the track opposite the stands when Mr. Todd stopped and knelt on the ground. “Someone has crossed here…the steps go into the bush.” He lit a match and the group gathered round him. “See? Looks like he walked that way.” He stood and followed the footsteps.
“He went to the fence and jumped over,” said Frank. “Not once, but twice. See over there? He’s come back further along and then returned a second time.”
They surged over the fence and followed the footsteps into the bush. Within fifty feet they disappeared. The ground was covered with rotted leaves and undergrowth and there were several tracks leading who knew where.
“We’ll have to split up and…”
Sergeant Hardy,” said one of the smokers. “There’s a fire further in. See the smoke? And it isn’t far away. Looks like it’s moving quickly. We’d better get back in the open or it’ll catch us.”
“We can go around,” said Todd. “Get behind it. Maybe the man we’re following lit it to chase us away. We shouldn’t let him scare us.”
Frank could smell the smoke as well as see it now. “What’s in there?”
He’d been thinking of the man crossing from the bush towards the stable, who’d denied meeting him. Most likely the same man who had met Ernest and taken the billy full of cash from Mrs. Patterson’s campaign. They were in it together, skimming money from the woman trying to make a living by persuading people to take the pledge. He’d said he was with the Blue Ribbon people, and that had made sense to Frank. The stable hand he’d met earlier had not made much impression on him, and he couldn’t put a face to him.
But he was sure now the man he had spoken to was the same man he’d seen sitting eating the apple with a hammer at his feet. There was no building going on at the track. Why did he need a hammer? Had he been hammering something nearby? Reinforcing the shed in the woods perhaps, as a place to hide someone?
“My wife is in there,” he said. “In the hut.” He was sure of it. “I’m going to get her.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Wiki.
He started to say no, but saw the determined look on her face. She wanted to save her friend.
“Count me in,” said Todd. “Thompson, you come with me. The rest of you get to the edge of the race track to make sure the fire doesn’t jump the fence. Carry water with you. There’s a water butt outside the stable. We’re going to save Mrs. Hardy but there’s no reason to let the race course burn down..”
The men ignored Todd and followed Frank in the direction of the smoke, which was drifting through the trees and hanging in hollows but still not fully engaged. He took off his coat and put it over his head so the sparks wouldn’t set his hair alight and muscled his way along the rutted track.
Dead Shot Page 13